I am the walrus. Really. This is no joke. I need ice. My baby depends on me. His world depends on ice. Ice. Water. Clams. Alaska—have you heard of it? It’s warmed twice as fast as the rest of what you call “the nation.” We have only “the world.” Only our world. Our sea ice is shrinking. Glaciers are shrinking. The ground is melting. The sea is warming. The sea is turning acidic from your burning. Acidic enough to be dissolving baby clams. Did I mention clams? Did I mention my baby?

We need ice to rest. We need ice to dive for clams. I leave my baby on the ice when I dive. The ice must be near the clams. If I leave my baby ashore, the clams are too far. If I swim to the clams to survive, my baby will starve. If I starve, he will starve. Already the ice has gone. Tens of thousands of us—our “nation”— dragged ourselves up on land. Our babies. Are dying.

Photo: Carl Safina

A company called Shell—like the clams have. It is coming. It will drill holes. Holes in our heart. The heart of our nation here in Alaska. Your nation calls it Hanna Shoal. We call it our soul. Heart. And soul. Shell will “explore.” We have for millions of years explored. We have been right here ten thousand. We know what we found. We found the soul of our nation in our time. We found bones of our ancestors, and our children’s future. We know less than you. But we know one thing that you do not know. We know this: We want to stay alive. We want, as much as you do, to stay alive. We work harder to stay alive. We have no suicide. Our life is hard enough to know the value of it. You disturb us. Deeply. Top to bottom.

The empty Shell, it has a plan. Their plan violates rules your “nation” said would protect us. Your nation’s broken promises fill many empty Shells. We do not respect you. Yet we fear. And you know we have reason to fear. You do vast damages.

Greenpeace ice class ship Esperanza tracking Shell’s oil rig on its way to drill in the Alaskan Arctic. Photo: Greenpeace

Big Oil—spills. Ours is the last cleanest ocean that you—who are not even here—dare to say is yours, your “nation.” You are a lie against the sun itself. These shores do not know you. They are not “yours.” Yet you are coming to claim your “right.” Care about us? As you care about even your own kind in the Gulf, in Prince William Sound, in the Niger Delta, the Amazon—in all the hundreds of places through which your filth has overflowed? You care this much: you care nothing. Cleanup? Not here. Impossible.

Our name is Odobenidae. We have had it hard. Too hard. We are the last species of our entire family. We are here with you today. For now. So far. Odobenidae. Remember it. Your great leader is Obama. Close enough to Odobenidae. Tell your Obama: you don’t want the empty Shell to spill your filth on us. Oil to fill your empty promise. Go back to your Gulf. Turn those ships around.

Note: In this guest essay, long-time killer whale researcher Ken Balcomb shows how obsolete but still salmon-killing dams are helping cause the decline of killer whales due to food shortage in the Northwest. The dams do feed us one thing: propaganda. As Ken wrote to me, “I was flabbergasted that the dams are closed to photography, and that their wasteful secret is downplayed in the mainstream propaganda fed to the public.” For more on the dams, see my book Song for the Blue Ocean. For more on Ken and the whales he has spent his life loving and studying, see my soon-to-be-released book Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel, which will hit bookstores on July 14. — Carl Safina

Ken Balcomb, photo by Carl Safina

I have studied the majestic southern resident killer whales of the Pacific Northwest for forty years (approximately one productive lifespan – whale or human), during which time much has been learned and shared with the world about this iconic endangered population. They are now arguably the best known whales in the world! But, that was not always the case. The common response in the 1960‘s and 1970‘s to my announcement that I was studying whales was, “Why?” “What good are they?”

My best response was to point out that astop marine predatorswhalesare indicators of the health of that environment in which they live – the ocean – and that is also an environment upon which humans depend. Now, with growing numbers of people appreciating the whales’ natural role in the marine environment, and better understanding their ecological requirement for specific food—Chinook salmon in this case—to survive, the conversation has moved toward a strategy of how best to provide that food. There is currently an active discussion about removal of the Snake River dams to save fish, or whales. The issue of whether dams should be breached to provide this food for the whales has now arrived. Would that be reasonable? Are we sure that will work?

Killer whale with salmon, photo by Ken Balcomb

I don’t consider this lightly. I tend to consider the status quo of institutions and structures to be enduring and worthy of protection, even if only as displays of the truly amazing feats our species has achieved in the course of human evolution and ingenuity. Not all of our feats have been without unforeseen consequence, however; and, most tend to crumble over time anyway. Dams require maintenance, and they eventually fill with sediment.

Until recently, dam removal was against my conservative nature. And it still seems to be counter to our government’s intent. This is in spite of clear evidence that the salmon-eating population of “killer” whales that I am studying is on a path to extinction along with significant populations of their main food resource—Chinook salmon—huge numbers of which formerly spawned and returned to the Snake River, and fed whales in the Pacific Ocean and humans, before the dams were built.

I had to see for myself what was going on in the Snake River watershed currently. So last week my brother and I drove up the highway to visit the dams on the Columbia River and upstream, sightseeing and taking photos and videos along the way and learning about the current passage of remnant populations of salmon.

But when we got to the McNary and Ice Harbor dams just below the Snake River and on it, it seemed as if an iron curtain had come down and we were prevented from taking any photographs, or even carrying cameras and cell phones behind the fences surrounding the dam structures. It was as if something was being hidden from view. And, it was. There was no point in our continuing upstream to Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams to take photographs and videos of fish passage, because that was not allowed.

Lower Monumental Dam, Snake River, Photo: USACE

In truth, already well known to others but not to me, these four Snake River dams are obsolete for their intended purposes and are being maintained at huge taxpayer expense for the benefit of a very few users. Plus, they are salmon-killers in a former river (now a series of lakes) that historically provided spawning and rearing habitat for millions of Chinook salmon. And, they now doom all technological attempts to bolster these salmon populations to expensive failure.

Even many of the Army Corps of Engineers’ internal documents recommend that returning the river to natural or normative conditions may be the only recovery scenario for Snake River fall Chinook salmon, and it will also benefit other salmon populations.

You and I are paying for this economic and ecological blemish with our tax dollars spent to maintain structures and negative return on investment in power generation, “barge” transportation, and recreation. The question I would now ask is “Why?” and “What good are they?”

Killer whales off San Juan Island, Photo by Carl Safina

Removal can be done inexpensively and doing so makes perfect ecological sense. The technological fixes for the dams have not improved wild salmon runs, and there is nothing left to try. There are no fixes for the deadly lakes behind the dams. As a nation, we are dangerously close to managing the beloved southern resident killer whale population to quasi-extinction (less than 30 breeding animals) as a result of diminishing populations of Chinook salmon upon which they depend. There are only about eighty of these whales now remaining (including juveniles and post-reproductive animals), down from nearly 100 two decades ago and down from 87 when they were listed as “Endangered” in 2005.

If you really want to have healthy ecosystems with salmon and whales in the Pacific Northwest future, and save tax/rate payer money at the same time, please contact or mail your thoughts to your elected representatives in support of a Presidential mandate to begin the return of the Snake River ecosystem to natural or normative conditions by the end of the current presidential administration. The time is now!

When they are gone it will be forever. Returning the Snake River to natural condition will help salmon and whales, and save money. Please do not wait until all are gone. Call or write your representatives today!

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/15/breach-the-snake-river-dams/feed/18The Good and The Bad for Atlantic Menhadenhttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/13/the-good-and-the-bad-for-atlantic-menhaden/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/13/the-good-and-the-bad-for-atlantic-menhaden/#commentsWed, 13 May 2015 16:23:45 +0000http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/?p=160760Co-authored by Elizabeth Brown

On May 5th the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission met to make pivotal decisions about the management of Atlantic Menhaden – arguably one of the most important fish in the sea.

Two keys decisions were up for discussion:

1.) What to set the Atlantic Menhaden catch limit at. Or, in other words, how many Menhaden should the fishery be allowed to take from the ocean.

2.) Whether managers should take a “big picture” or ecosystem-based approach to managing Atlantic menhaden. This means taking into account the important ecological role Menhaden play in the ocean as a key food source for many species.

The Menhaden fishing industry was pushing for an increase to the catch limit put in place back in 2012 to rebuild this species. Their reasoning being that the latest population assessment for Menhaden indicates it is in a better state than it was a few years ago, so they should be allowed to take more fish from the sea. The Menhaden fishery is the largest on the U.S. East Coast. The majority of Menhaden (80%) are ground up for use in fish oil dietary supplements, fertilizers, and animal feed. This industry is controlled by a single company, Omega Protein. The remaining 20% of the Menhaden catch is used by commercial fishermen for bait.

Ocean conservationists, recreational anglers, and eco-tourism businesses were more concerned about whether managers would leave enough Menhaden in the ocean to support its vast array of predators. Menhaden provide food for several important recreational and commercial fish, such as striped bass, weakfish, cod, and bluefin tuna, seabirds like osprey and eagles, and whales. Menhaden, along with other small prey fish, are the glue that holds the ocean ecosystem together. More than 10,000 people wrote to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission prior to the meeting pushing for a big picture approach, urging them to not increase the Menhaden catch limit until they account for the needs of its predators.

Humpback Whale Foraging on Menhaden just off New York City. Photo by Artie Raslich, Gotham Whale.

So what was the outcome?

Well, let’s start with the good news. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted to amend the way it currently manages Atlantic Menhaden andcommitted to taking a big picture approach. Over the next two years they will determine how many Menhaden need to be left in the ocean to maintain the populations of larger fish, seabirds, and whales, so that they can take this into account when setting the catch limit. [Currently managers only consider how many Menhaden are needed to sustain its population]. This is an extraordinary step forward and we should celebrate!

But before we pop the corks, it’s important to note that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided that in the meantime they would give in to fishing industry pressure and increase the catch limit. They voted to increase the catch limit by 10% for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. To put this into context, two years ago managers decreased the catch limit by 20%. So they gave the fishery half of this back. This was a shortsighted decision for several reasons.

First, while the latest population assessment indicates Menhaden biomass (the weight of all fish) has increased, it also indicates Menhaden abundance (the number of fish) remains low relative to historic levels. Biomass has increased while abundance remains low because the proportion of old, big fish in the population has increased in recent years. But the amount of fish surviving past year 1 has been low, so there are few young, small fish. This is highly concerning and is reason to remain cautious about the current health of the Menhaden population.

Second, it puts the needs of Menhaden’s predators on the back-burner for another two years. It is the abundance or number of fish that matters most to predators, and as noted above, abundance is low. Additionally, fishing for Menhaden is highly concentrated in the Chesapeake Bay and Mid-Atlantic region, where Menhaden is perhaps needed the most to support declining species like Striped Bass. Back in 2001, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission set a goal to “protect and maintain the important ecological role Atlantic Menhaden play along the coast.” It will take until 2017 for this to come to fruition.

Third, the increased Menhaden catch limit really only helps a single company, Omega Protein—they are currently allocated 80% of the catch. Whereas, maintaining the current catch limit would have left more Menhaden in the ocean, which benefits many fisheries and businesses along the Atlantic coast (e.g. striped bass fisheries, tuna fisheries, whale watching businesses).

Striped Bass gobbling up a Menhaden. Photo by John McMurray.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s decision to increase the Atlantic Menhaden catch limit was frankly irresponsible. Thankfully, this should be the last time managers put the needs of the Menhaden fishing industry over everything else. Assuming the Commission follows through on its decision to move to a big-picture management approach, future management decisions will finally consider the needs of the fish, seabirds, and whales that rely on Menhaden, and the fisheries and businesses these species support. We look forward to that day.

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/13/the-good-and-the-bad-for-atlantic-menhaden/feed/0A SEA IN FLAMEShttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/20/a-sea-in-flames/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/20/a-sea-in-flames/#commentsMon, 20 Apr 2015 13:06:47 +0000http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/?p=159418Though a bit imprecise, the time, approximately 9:50 p.m. on April 20, 2010, marks the end of knowing much precisely. A floating machinery system roughly the size of a forty-story hotel has for months been drilling into the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico. Its creators have named the drilling rig “Deepwater Horizon.”

Oil giant BP has contracted Deepwater Horizon’s owner, Transocean, and various companies and crews to drill deep into the sea floor 40-odd miles southeast of the Louisiana coast. The target has also been named: the Macondo formation. Giving it a name helps pull the target into our realm of understanding. But by doing so we risk failing to understand that it is a hot, highly pressurized layer of petroleum hydrocarbons—oil and methane—pent up and packed away undisturbed inside the earth for many millions of years.

Oil from the air near the bleeding well, June 2010- Photo: Carl Safina

Under mile-deep water, the worker crews have struck their target fully three and a half miles from the surface. The target is about to strike back.

A churning drill bit sent from a world of light and warmth and living beings. More than three miles under the sea surface, more than two miles under the sea floor. Eternal darkness. Unimaginable pressure. The drill bit has met a gas pocket. That tiny pinprick. That pressure. Mere bubbles, a mild fizz from deep within. Sudden influx of gas into the well. Rushing up the pipe. Gas expanding like crazy. Through the open gates on the seafloor. One more mile to the sea surface.

The sight was distressing to say the least-Photo: Carl Safina

The beings above are experiencing some difficulty managing it. A variety of people face a series of varied decisions. They don’t make all the right ones.

Explosion. Fireball.

Destroyed: eleven men. Created: Nine widows. Twenty-one fatherless kids including one who’ll soon be born. Only the rig rests in peace, one mile down. Only the beginning.

Blowout. Across the whole region the natural systems shudder. Months to control it. Years to get over it. Human lives changed by the hundreds of thousands. Effects that ripple across the country, the hemisphere, the world. Imperfect judgment at sea and in offices in Houston, perhaps forgivable. Inadequate safeguards unforgivable. No amount of money enough. Beyond Payable.

The landscape changes slowly from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama to Florida. And so does the light. Green fields. Blue skies. Black cows. Red Barns. A Baptist church advises, “Do Your Work Today As If There Is No Tomorrow.”

Perhaps yes, now’s not a time to wreck your head over tomorrow; too many unknowns. Another church and a bit more to the point: “Forgive Us, Lord.” The oil is coming.

Ruined water – Photo: Carl Safina

One of life’s simple pleasures: driving with the radio on: I hear that the wife of one of the eleven killed says BP will never feel the pain the survivors feel. But how could it? It is not a person. Where a heart would be, it has only money. The Supreme Court disagrees with me; they say a corporation is a person. Does a corporation have a belly-button? Not something for courts to trifle with. Not, in Truth, subject to their opinion.

It’s hot. The sun raises for itself an ocean haze. The shorelines are confettied with orange boom, bracing for the oil’s arrival on the tide. The slick is coming. The rigs foreshadow it. The booms await it.

On the corner, the BP station. I still have half a tank.

Various people called this blowout ‘the worst environmental catastrophe in American history.’ Some simply said ‘in history.’

Well, no.

In the blowout, 206 million gallons of oil mixed with the Gulf’s 660 quadrillion gallons of water. That volume of water could greatly dilute the oil. But the carbon dioxide we’re adding to the atmosphere isn’t getting diluted; it’s continually getting more concentrated. Oil getting into the ocean has everyone’s attention. But the real catastrophe is the oil we don’t spill.

It’s the oil we burn, the coal we burn, the gas we burn. The worst spill is the carbon dioxide we spill out of our tailpipes and smokestacks every second of every day, year upon decade.

That spill is changing the atmosphere, changing world climate, altering the heat balance of the whole planet, destroying the world’s polar systems, killing the wildlife of icy seas, killing the tropics’ coral reefs, raising the level of the sea, dissolving shellfish, and turning the oceans acid. And as the reefs dissolve and the ocean’s productivity declines, so will decline the food security of hundreds of millions of coastal peoples.

Multinational corporations are by definition not patriotic; they can’t afford to be. But we can’t afford them not to be. Their interests are not our interests. For the main reason behind America’s decline—in manufacturing, jobs, technological innovation, and moral leadership—we need look no further. They have strangled innovation in its crib. Killed all our first-born ideas and sent the entrepreneurs who could have saved us fleeing to places like China.

Dauphin Island, Alabama, Fourth of July 2010-Photo: Carl Safina

China understands its moment. Today China is rapidly becoming the world’s leader in wind, solar, electric cars, and high-speed rail. It’s also the world’s greatest lender of money to the U.S.; we have yoked ourselves to interest payments to the world’s biggest totalitarian government, while forking over union jobs, technological leadership, and the American Dream. It’s been said that empires are not destroyed from the outside; they commit suicide.

Many say—and they have a point—that if Americans do not want to hand even more money and clout to the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia (and I don’t), we should drill more at home. I would say America should harness all our domestic sources of energy. We should get on an emergency war-footing crash program for creating the jobs and building the infrastructure to surpass China and northern Europe’s renewable-energy race, summon the determination to lead the world into the eternal-energy economy, and emerge again as the greatest country on Earth. Whoever builds the new energy future will own the future. And the nation that owns the energy future will sell it to everyone else. I’d rather that nation be the United States of America.
– – – –
Adapted from the book A Sea In Flames by Carl Safina. Crown, 2011.

I’d just arrived in Madagascar for the first time. I was with the foremost expert on the primates called lemurs, trying to pay attention. I had everything to learn. We’d just gotten there on the ship National Geographic Orion, courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions.

As soon as we docked in Toliara, people in dugout canoes arrived at our ship seeking to sell us sea turtle shells for one dollar. You start to see right away that the problems are the usual: poverty, ignorance, the need to eat. (We soon met Dr. Garth Cripps who described the innovative programs of Blue Ventures, helping local people set up protected areas on depleted reefs and gain access to family planning.)

We were told that one dollar could buy us a sea turtle’s shell. Photo by Carl SafinaSmall mesh nets, designed to catch everything. Photo by Carl Safina

Madagascar, an island the size of California is considered part of Africa. But biologically it’s a tiny continent, isolated since the time of dinosaurs, with many animals and plants found nowhere else. Africa’s famous mammals, for instance—gazelles and elephants and big cats—never made it to Madagascar. Most birds never made it. Humans didn’t get there until about 2,000 years ago. And even they didn’t come from Africa; they were seafarers from what’s now Indonesia.

Lemurs live only on Madagascar. (Say LEE-murz). They evolved there from a pre-monkey, pre-lemur “prosimian” primate ancestor who probably survived a trip across the Mozambique Channel in the hollow of a tree washed out of a river. Because they got there tens of millions of years before rodents, over ages they evolved to exploit all kinds of niches. There are mouse lemurs, squirrel-like lemurs, monkey-like lemurs; there were gorilla-like lemurs until humans arrived and wiped them out. (Humans also killed off Madagascar’s flightless birds, including the world’s heaviest bird, the elephant bird, who weighed eight hundred pounds and stood about ten feet tall until, just 1,000 years ago, the last one fell). There are—and this seems incredible—just over one hundred species of living lemurs! Because they evolved without humans, like birds on oceanic islands, lemurs have no fear of people and have sweet, confiding, mellow personalities.

But lemurs have a problem—guess who.

One of the two-dozen “Sportive” lemur species. Photo by Carl Safina

Madagascar is famous for the fact that people have cut and burned more than 90 percent of the forest. Frankly, I’ve avoided the place for that reason. What I found surprised me greatly. Madagascar has about as many people as California and the population is rapidly rising. I expected throngs of people in very poor villages, the landscape occupied to the horizons with sparse farm plots, cattle herds and goats eating every bush and blade to the ground. (I’d taken what I’ve seen in East Africa and multiplied it in my mind to cover 90 percent of my imagined Madagascar). Instead, Madagascar has vast open areas with few people, goats or cows.

Those wide-open areas seem hard to explain. The people are poor but seem well-fed. Friendly. A visitor feels no resentment or hostility. Between villages there is a lot of room. Ecologically, the tragedy seems that there is simply a culture of burning. People burn land every year or two. Uncontrolled fires sweep wide areas, often engulfing parts of remaining forests. Ostensibly this is to make new grass for cattle. But in fact one sees few cattle out in the open areas. People drive small herds along the roads near villages. Virtually no goats. It’s the burning that creates vast human-made savannahs on a mini-continent where no savannahs existed. So those open grassy areas hold almost no birds or native mammals; certainly no lemurs.

Much of Madagascars former forest areas are open lands, regularly burned. Photo by Carl Safina

Get yourself into any remaining forest or protected area though—there they are! Over the course of several days we visited three protected areas and, with the help of expert local guides, we saw several species of lemurs in each. Along those forest paths we encountered birds and native chameleons and other lizards, and native trees.

The potential for reforestation and recovery is great. But before that could happen, the people with the matches must want to stop setting fires that don’t much help them, and hurt everything else. Patricia Wright, based at her Centre Valbio field station and Stony Brook University, is working hard to find the ways that will succeed.

March 27, 2015 – The Agulhas current flows down the east coast of Africa from the north. It’s described as “narrow, swift, and strong” on our briefing material aboard National Geographic Orion. As it reaches the southern tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas (Cape of Good Hope is not actually the continent’s southern tip), it recirculates. Thus a major source of the current is the current itself.

In May to July millions and millions of Southern African Pilchards (Sardinops sagax) come to spawn in northbound water, forming the famous Agulhas Current sardine run. Schools can each be five miles long, a mile wide, and a hundred feet deep.

In the last few years some terrific footage of this phenomenal phenomenon has been filmed. Dolphins and schooling sharks rush the sardines as thousands of gannets rain from above.

It’s only March, but we got a tantalizing taste of the action in a mini-frenzy we happened upon today near Mossel Bay, South Africa. We had gannets, Spinner and Common Dolphins, several Bryde’s Whales, terns, and even a few African Penguins. It was quite a sight and we got to hang out near the action for a good while.

A juvenile Cape Gannet streaks in among a group of Spinner Dolphins – Photo by Carl SafinaA Spinner Dolphin with an attached remora appears to have just pinned a fish in its mouth, while the dolphin on the right has just missed a leaping fish – Photo by Carl SafinaCommon Dolphins were among those taking part – Photo by Carl SafinaI was surprised to see several groups of African Penguins in the action – Photo by Carl Safina
]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/30/in-the-agulhas/feed/0Great White Sharks of Gansbaai: No Hooking, No Handling, No Harmhttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/25/great-white-sharks-of-gansbaai-no-hooking-no-handling-no-harm/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/25/great-white-sharks-of-gansbaai-no-hooking-no-handling-no-harm/#commentsWed, 25 Mar 2015 16:03:50 +0000http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/?p=157962On board with Lindblad Expeditions Southern Africa and Indian Ocean tour.

March 23, 2015 – As we began our cruise up the southeast coast of Africa aboard the ship National Geographic Orion, we departed Cape Town, South Africa. Several of us spent the day on an outing with Marine Dynamics out of Gansbaai to see great white sharks near Dyer Island. We anchored in an easy swell, and weren’t there five minutes when the first of the day’s sharks showed up.

Photo by Carl Safina

The company is very conscientious about shark conservation. They work with conservation research people, and their staff were knowledgeable and excellent. All the sharks we saw are known individuals and are named (we saw three individuals throughout the day, identified mainly by distinctive fin shapes). The sharks are not hooked or harassed. The banter of the staff is respectful of the sharks as animals in their world. The same company is also working on conservation of the critically endangered African penguin, which shares these waters. Among the fun facts we learned in our orientation: while all species of sharks combined kill an average of ten people per year worldwide, several times that many people are electrocuted by toasters. Is it safer to swim in the ocean than to make toast in the morning? Not quite, but it’s something to think about.

Photo by Carl Safina

I’ve heard some people say that attracting sharks with ground-up fish disturbs them. It is certainly an interaction with them. But I’ve seen so many sharks killed for so many years, and we know that humans continue to kill tens of millions of sharks annually, and I’ve watched the Great white’s reputation change since Jaws, from mindless killer to vulnerable top predator in need of protection from extermination. So attracting them to a boat for people who appreciate them, with people working to protect them, doesn’t bother me. If attracting fish was our entire relationship to the ocean, it would be a big improvement.

And the sharks arespectacular. There is no denying that their power—and those teeth—are riveting to see.

Last month, President Obama used his executive power to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay from future oil and gas drilling. Bristol Bay is a 52,000 square mile area (roughly the size of Florida), north of the Aleutian Islands that the largest surviving salmon populations on Earth swim through on their way to and from the rivers where they were born and where they will spawn and die. President Obama said, “It’s something that is too precious for us to be putting out to the highest bidder.” 1

Aerial view of braided wetlands and tundra that is typical in the pristine Bristol Bay region. Photo from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Bristol Bay is best known for its abundant wild salmon. Each year, all five species of salmon – sockeye, coho, king, pink, and chum – return to Bristol Bay to breed. These events are referred to as “salmon runs.” The most abundant is the sockeye, with an average of 37 million sockeye flocking to its waters each year 2. In fact, Bristol Bay hosts the largest remaining sockeye salmon run in the world. In addition to salmon, Bristol Bay fishermen fish for several other important species including Alaska pollock, halibut, sablefish, and king crab.

Sockeye Salmon. Photo by Carl Safina.

Bristol Bay is also home to millions of seabirds and various species of marine mammals – sea otters, seals, walruses, humpback whales, beluga whales, and the North Pacific Right Whale.

The protection of Bristol Bay from oil and gas drilling is a great victory for Bristol Bay fishermen and its communities. Bristol Bay Native tribes, fishermen, local businesses, and conservation organizations have been fighting for this type of protection for years. They have taken great care to protect their valuable resources and create sustainable fisheries. (In contrast, in many others places around the nation coastal habitats have been degraded and the productivity of the coastal ecosystems reduced.) This is also a great victory for nature, so we should all rejoice!

Spawning Chum Salmon. Photo by Carl Safina.

But Bristol Bay is not completely free from harm yet. Federal officials are still considering a proposal for a massive gold and copper mine (Pebble Mine) in Bristol Bay 3. The mine would poison some of the most productive salmon rivers left on Earth. Lawsuits by Pebble Mine are attempting to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from using its powers to protect Bristol Bay from the mining activities 4. A decision on these lawsuits is expected in early 2015.

We urge that the mine proposal be denied. It would be insane to risk the greatest salmon populations on Earth and so many eternal living treasures for a few years of mere gold.

You can help by writing to congressional representatives, senators, and the President to ask them to protect Bristol Bay from Pebble Mine. You can find the contact information for your representatives here and your senators here. Or you can send a letter to all of congress here. Please also visit http://www.savebristolbay.org/ and support their efforts.

By the early 1990’s, decades of heavy fishing had depleted several of New England’s important fish species, including cod, haddock, pollock and flounders (collectively referred to as ‘groundfish’). Fishermen had been catching fish faster than they could reproduce and had degraded fish habitats by dragging nets. To help rebuild New England’s fish populations, managers established several areas where fishing with any gears capable of catching groundfish species were prohibited. These areas were designed to protect both young, immature fish and large breeding adults. Later, in the early 2000’s, several areas both within and outside these closed fishing areas were designated as habitat closures, designed specifically to protect vulnerable habitats from all destructive bottom fishing gears.

Over the last 10-20 years, these protected areas have provided important safe havens for many species and have allowed previously degraded ocean habitats to recover. These protected areas have complex bottom structures and living communities that include kelp, mussel beds, sponges, and more. These areas often contain larger and older fish compared to fished areas. Since larger fish produce many times more eggs than small fish, these large fish are critical to helping populations rebuild1. Protected areas also help create a build-up of fish, which can swim into outside areas, and actually improve fishing there2.

These protected areas have provided many benefits to New England’s groundfish species, including Georges Bank haddock, Acadian redfish, pollock, and white hake–which have all recovered from previously depleted states. They have also benefited other species, like scallops–whose populations are thriving– and many marine mammals.

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Photo by NOAA.

Unfortunately, despite these positives, New England fisheries remain in trouble. Some groundfish, like Atlantic cod and yellowtail flounder, remain deeply depleted. Recently, scientists estimated that Atlantic cod in the Gulf of Maine is at a mere 3 to 4% of a healthy abundance level. And the Atlantic cod population in Georges Bank is not fairing much better. Rising ocean temperatures are further threatening New England’s fish populations. Record high temperatures in New England have caused fish to retreat to cooler waters, and can affect fish growth, reproduction, and survival3. In recent years, the federal government has had to fork over millions of dollars to help struggling New England fishermen, who have not been able to catch enough fish to make a living.

New England fisheries are now at a critical juncture. There is considerable debate about how to fix New England’s fisheries—And specifically how to manage New England’s ocean habitats, as managers work on updating their habitat plan for the region.

The fishing industry has been pushing fishery managers to reduce the amount of protected areas [the protected areas that have benefited so many New England species and the fishermen too]. Why? Because they want to have more opportunities to catch fish, to reduce some of the economic burdens they face. They have also argued that many of these protected areas are no longer necessary because they were originally put in place to reduce fishing pressure on depleted species, and now fishing pressure is limited through species-specific catch limits.

New England fishery managers are apparently going along with this idea. Their proposed habitat plan that they released in October primarily includes options for reducing habitat protections4. In nearly all sub-regions, the options put forward are to keep the current protected areas as they are OR to replace them with smaller, patchier protected areas. The only sub-region where managers have proposed to add new protected areas is the eastern Gulf of Maine. Overall, New England could lose up to 70% of their protected areas.

The left figure shows the current protected areas that are in place in the New England region. The right figure shows the preferred management options from the new proposed habitat plan. In the eastern Gulf of Maine, managers have proposed to add two new protected areas, but in all other sub-regions, managers are considering reducing the amount of protected areas.

Scientists have issued warnings about removing these long-standing protected areas. They have warned that these areas contain some of the last remaining old, large female fish and last remaining structurally diverse habitats in the region. Opening them up to fishing could un-do decades of progress and sink New England’s fisheries for good.

Recently, 138 marine scientists (including Carl Safina and Sylvia Earle) wrote to federal fishery managers that given the current state of some of New England’s fish species and the growing environmental threats they face, reducing New England’s protected areas is “highly unwise and unsupportable by today’s scientific understanding.”5

Scientists have encouraged fishery managers to instead focus on improving and expanding protected areas for New England’s species and habitats. They say if New England wants more fish, they must protect the places where fish grow, feed, and reproduce. Limiting catches is not enough. To have healthy fish populations, you need healthy ocean ecosystems. Scientists have also said protecting important fish habitats is crucial to helping fish cope with warming ocean temperatures and changing environmental conditions.

New England fishery managers have a history of not listening to these scientific warnings, and putting short-term economic interests over long-term conservation. This is largely why New England’s fisheries are in a current crisis6. Yet, they seem to be continuing down this path.

If New England really wants to fix their fisheries, they need to start listening to the scientists, re-think their habitat plan, and focus on long-term sustainability.

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/19/protected-no-longer-desperate-fisheries-managers-want-to-open-closed-areas/feed/1Pancake Sharks – The Cousins are in Troublehttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/23/pancake-sharks-the-cousins-are-in-trouble/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/23/pancake-sharks-the-cousins-are-in-trouble/#commentsThu, 23 Oct 2014 17:03:03 +0000http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/?p=148697Reversing overfishing, climate change, and population growth can seem insurmountable. Safina Center Fellows strive to amplify the global conservation discussion and, in targeted ways and places, overcome some of these obstacles. They bring a wide range of skills, engaging in every way from primary research to policy to popular media. They make a difference.

Where the rubber meets the road to change, the drive to redefine the future of our damaged oceans starts with the belief that progress is possible. —Carl Safina

Demian: It’s just a term I use to help people realize that sharks, rays and skates are all related. When you talk about rays and skates, many people are just not that interested. If you say they are “flat sharks” or “pancake sharks,” people are automatically more interested because people tend to like sharks (or at least feel strongly about them). There are actually more rays and skates than there are sharks, in terms of species, and they are by themselves interesting, ecologically important and commercially valuable animals.

So there are more species of rays and skates than there are of sharks?

Demian: Let’s talk about batoids – that’s rays, skates, guitarfish and sawfish. We know there are about 500 species of sharks and over 600 species of batoids. And even though there are more batoid species, we know so much less about many of them than we do about many of the shark species. Even the number of species is changing because researchers are finding that some batoids that were described as belonging to only one species are, in fact, actually a complex of different species. The manta ray, for example, was thought to be one globally distributed species, but has been recently recognized to actually comprise at least two – one that lives over coral reefs and one that likes open water. And the manta ray is an iconic animal in the public eye and the subject of a lot of research. Imagine then what we have left to learn about some of the other batoids that are considered more mundane.

Most people are aware that sharks are heavily fished. But their cousins, the batoids (rays and skates) are often found right alongside them in fish markets. Photo by Demian Chapman.

People do seem to be very attracted to mantas.

Debra: Yes, they are definitely among the best-known and most charismatic of the batoids. Even so, manta rays and their close relatives the devil rays (mobula rays) are fished for their meat and gills. As they feed, they filter plankton out of the water column and have special structures called gill rakers that they use to separate the plankton from the water. Those gills are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The idea is that if you crush up gill rakers and take the powder in a tonic, it will detoxify your blood. There’s no real basis for this claim but people believe it will help, and the demand has been created, so the gill rakers are traded.

I understand why in the past, when wild animal populations were much more robust and the human population was much smaller, wild animal parts used for medicinal ingredients could be somewhat sustainable. But now, with wild populations plummeting and the human population boom in China, that really spells disaster.

Demian: I think what may be happening is that people who grew up with Traditional Chinese Medicine as the norm, and who are now part of the booming, more affluent middle class, have more disposable income and are also getting older. They are starting to struggle to maintain their health and turn to Traditional Chinese Medicine when modern medicine begins to fail. With any luck, if the animals can weather the current storm, the younger generation in China might not buy into these traditional medicines as much. If this happens, then the demand for Traditional Chinese Medicine that relies on wild animal parts will diminish considerably.

Does our lack of interest or ignorance about the other batoids cause problems?

Demian: People see mantas kind of like whales—they seem harmless, graceful, awe-inspiring… But in some ways many of the rest of the batoids are like the “red-headed step child.” People just don’t seem to be that interested in them unless there’s a sensational headline, like someone getting stung by one at the beach. As a result, research money and conservation efforts go more toward protecting the more charismatic sharks or species that are commercially important in first world countries. While these species definitely need research and management attention, a recent paper produced by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) highlighted that batoids were ranked as even more threatened than sharks. Sawfish and guitarfish, for example, are some of the most endangered and vulnerable marine fish on Earth, and there is a very real possibility that some of them could become extinct within our generation.

Tell us more about sawfish and guitarfish—most people have never heard of them.

Debra: Sawfish are all endangered or critically endangered. They used to be very common in tropical or subtropical waters, but now they are almost extinct. Most countries that used to have sawfish haven’t seen them in decades. They’ve gone locally extinct. Sawfish get caught in coastal gillnets and in trawls. They aren’t the target of the fishery but get tangled in nets and wind up as bycatch. Back when they were abundant, sawfish were killed as a nuisance to the fisheries. Locals would sell the saw (rostrum) as a curiosity. But nowadays sawfish fins are quite valuable in the fin trade in China, mostly for the traditional delicacy, shark fin soup. Sawfish have become one of the highest value fins in the world, especially now that they are so rare. It’s a strange history—no one ever really targeted sawfish. Now, even though it is illegal to catch and kill them, they are so rare and valuable that sawfish are rarely released alive even when they are accidentally caught in a net.

Sawfish are on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. All are listed as endangered or critically endangered.

How sad to watch such unusual, magnificent creatures like sawfish go extinct–for soup!

Debra: Yes, indeed. They are a true ocean giant, with the largest species growing to lengths similar to the longest white sharks (20 feet). There are five species of sawfish and they are all in big trouble. The only places where we know that we have viable and well-protected populations of sawfish are in and around the Everglades (Florida) and also off Northern Australia. There may still be some in the Bahamas and in Brazil, but more research efforts are needed in these areas. Sawfish need a big stretch of protected habitat–they live near the coast and need mangroves and seagrass. And places where net fishing is not that common.

What about guitarfish? Are they also killed for the fin trade?

Demian: Guitarfish look like a cross between a shark and a ray. Unfortunately, they are also highly valued in the fin trade. We recently conducted genetic testing on some high value fins in Hong Kong that were traded under the name “Qun.” These fins sell for close to $1,000 a kilogram. We found they were all guitarfish. For the most part, the trade in guitarfish fins is completely off the radar of conservation organizations and management agencies. If this doesn’t change they will most likely wind up as endangered as the sawfishes.

Guitarfish on sale in a Dubai fishmarket are used for their meat but their fins are prized in Asia for a traditional dish—shark fin soup. Photo by Demian Chapman.

There are a lot of claims in the media these days that the demand for shark fins has greatly diminished in China and that this will “save the sharks.”Is that true and will it save the batoids as well?

Demian: Well, it’s more complicated than that. Even as demand for fins diminishes, there is still a huge, global trade in fins of sharks and some batoids. And lets not forget that we also capture skates and rays in huge numbers for their meat, as well as manta and devil rays for their meat and gill rakers. We have to address these issues as well.

So from your point of view, what do you recommend?

Demian: I think that it isn’t rocket science. We just need to make some investments into researching batoids and in batoid conservation. With the limited resources we have at present, research money tends to go to the charismatic ray species such as mantas, which is okay if they are the ones who truly need it most. But sometimes less iconic species need it much more.

Debra: Readers probably know a bit about shark conservation and have even signed petitions for shark conservation efforts. These days there’s a lot of investment in shark conservation and high profile media attention. But if you pause, take a broader perspective and consider these lesser-known relatives of well known sharks, you’ll see that batoids are in bad shape too! There are all kinds of “pancake sharks” out there and many of them need our help.